The internet loves a good fan theory. The trouble is, the phrase “fan theory” has started to go the way of words like content or hipster or artisan or any of the other words whose definitions are so vague, so all encompassing, that they have very little meaning at this point.

“Fan theory” is currently used as a descriptor for the following things:

A prediction for an upcoming storyline

Analysis of a character’s motivations

Analysis of a storyline

Fan fiction

The dissection of a trailer and conclusions drawn from moments in said trailer

Explanation of subtext, predicated on the explainer failing to recognize subtext.

Recognition of dramatic irony or a plot turn before the reveal

None of the above should be considered fan theories, in the opinion of this blogger.

So then, you may ask, what the heck qualifies as a fan theory?

And yes, I’m including “R + L = J” as something that is not, and never was, a fan theory. It’s a storyline, folks, not a theory you invented.

I’ve been trying to write this article for a while. Years. While I try to avoid listicles, I’ve found that, at times, they have their uses. These are my opinions and observations on what we talk about when we talk about fan theories, and what they are, and how we should talk about them.

No one has an agreed-upon definition for “fan theory.”

Fan theory is not listed on Urban Dictionary. It is not explained on Know Your Meme. Even the /r/FanTheories subreddit does not have any official stance on what makes a fan theory a fan theory.

This is largely because the phrase “fan theory” means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. Part of why I’m writing this is to reach some kind of definition and meaning, and to refute what I see as being inaccurate uses of the phrase.

A fan theory is a form of contemporary critical theory, in which the audience analyzes the text and creates a new interpretation that explains “what really happened,” creating a separate narrative aside from or within the narrative.

This is what I’ve come up with. I don’t know if it’s perfect, but I think it says a lot.

Now, more importantly, I’d like to explore both what makes a fan theory good and what makes a fan theory bad and what makes a fan theory not a fan theory. Part of this will include citing particularly good and bad fan theories.

And yes, I’ll address so-called Westworld fan theories.

A weak fan theory is anything that suggests “it was all a dream” or “the main character was dead the whole time” or any variation of this.

I’ve received a number of questions about The Moonborn: or, Moby-Dick on the Moon, my novel that came out on Monday, November 14th. While I love getting questions about it, I decided to put together this list for people who might have questions and would like an easy answer.

Note that there are no spoilers, other than in a very general sense.

Is it really about Moby-Dick on the Moon?

Yes. With robots instead of whales. However, you may find that it’s slightly more metafictional than your standard dark and gritty reboot. Or you may not.

Do I need to read Moby-Dick first?

In my opinion, no. The narrator of The Moonborn hasn’t even read Moby-Dick. But I would like to think that you’ll find yourself wanting to read Moby-Dick after The Moonborn.

If you aren’t familiar with it, The Eric Andre Show is a post-modern talk show starring Eric Andre and Hannibal Buress, two comedians who are either parodying a late night show or trying to escape one.

Hannibal Buress on the left, Eric Andre on the right

In its description of the show, Hulu describes it as the “most manic and unorthodox late night talk show ever made,” calling Andre “inept and bipolar” and Buress “his apathetic co-host.” The AV Club says “what most distinguishes The Eric Andre Show is its disintegration.” MediaLife Magazine, in a furious review, calls it “slapdash, noisy, annoying and not funny.” IndieWire, in a review of its fourth season, calls it “some beautiful chaos.”

But the review that still haunts me and informs my entire viewing of the show is one on IMDB, titled Is This Comedy? The author, diesixdie, describes the experience of The Eric Andre Show with such troubling precision and insight that it has informed my view The Eric Andre Show ever since:

“We seem to be viewing some sort inescapable closed universe containing nothing but an endless slightly nightmarish talk show. It feels like a bad dream, half remembered. It feels like there’s some unspeakable horror lurking just off-camera that the people on-stage can see, but, we can’t, and they can only stay safe by pretending to ignore it.”

Those of you who have read this blog with any regularity will recall my True Detective review in which I offered a fan theory about the fate of Ross Geller’s son, Ben. It was a strange blog post, in that it ended up being a theory about a show I haven’t watched in years. The other strange thing about that blog post is that it got a lot of attention, showing up referenced or summarized on Entertainment Weekly, Hello Giggles, Cosmo, Redbook, Refinery29, and a series of other websites.

Like this:

With Saul Goodman once again gracing our televisions as of last week, it’s a good time to reflect on Breaking Bad. Specifically, on its final episode, the polarizing finale entitled “Felina.”

Of course, many people loved the finale. But, on the other hand, there were those who found no satisfaction in it. Or, more accurately, they found no satisfaction because they found it to be too satisfying, too easy for both Walter White and his audience.

A moment from Walter White’s final return home.

Unrealistic, people said. Too happy and too smooth, they said. The consensus of many seemed to be that the last episode had abandoned the realism of the show in favor of a (relatively) happy ending.

I do agree with one aspect of this criticism: we should not view the ending as being the true ending. But I think that there is a third way to view the finale. No, it wasn’t a dying fantasy of everyone’s favorite cancer-ridden drug dealer anti-hero. But no, it wasn’t “closure-happy” or “too easy” either. Continue reading “The Real Ending of Breaking Bad: No One is Okay”→

Like this:

With the year ending, it’s time to write and reflect about something that I had never thought about until 2015: the Friends character Ross Geller, portrayed by David Schwimmer.

This guy.

During August of this year, I wrote an article in which I suggested that perhaps Ross lost custody of his son, Ben Geller, in the later seasons of Friends.

Two strange things happened after this: this blog began to receive more traffic than it ever had before, as my theory was huff-and-posted across the internet during two mild waves of virality. My theory was often described as “heartbreaking,” which surprised me, granted that the entire theory was that Ross was an unfit father and disturbed man who deserved to lose his son, and that Ben still had two good parents even without Ross in his life.

This kid had two good parents and one really bad one. Probably better if the bad one just disappeared altogether, which is what appears to have happened?

Like this:

After several waves of intermediate virality regarding a theory about Friends, this blog and its author have received some very entertaining feedback, through the legions of recappers, bloggers, and commenters that have thoughts and feelings regarding my suggestion that Ross Geller was an inept father who lost custody of his son. My initial response, when reading some of these, was to want to go out there and argue with people.

Instead, I remembered something important: haters are inevitably going to hate. As proven by the celebrities who read mean tweets about themselves, the best thing to do is laugh and shrug and keep doing what you’re doing.

“Anyone who spends this much time analyzing character on a comedy, yes – a fictionalized version of peoples lives, has way too much time on his or her hands. Do something productive!” – Lori M. H., commenter on Huff Post.

Now brace yourself for this one, because it’s long but it’s a good one:

“I just finished binge watching Friends from beginning to end on netflix, over the course of a few months. Friends had a lot of internal inconsistencies which indicate that actually it’s not a show where you should put a lot of effort into logically understanding. For example in one episode Chandler flies to Yemen and in the following episode (one week later) there is no mention of Yemen. It takes practically a week just to fly to Yemen and return. In another episode Joey’s eyebrows are destroyed and in the following episode, another week later, his eyebrows have returned to normal. This is a show that can be enjoyed for the wonderful acting and wonderful writing and jokes, but that is not a holy text to be understood through study and close analysis. It’s more like Gilligan’s Island, less like Lost. What is going on here is that Lovett has his own dead horses to beat, and is using old episodes of Friends to beat those horses.” – Peter J, commenter on Huffington Post.

Haters will hate

I’ll leave one response to all of this: over-thinking things is fun. Blogging is one of several fulfilling hobbies that I have, and a hobby I would recommend to all the angry internet commenters.

And to answer one more question I’ve gotten: No, I’m not much of a Friends fan. If you recall from the original post, I thought of this while watching True Detective, not because I watch Friends. I didn’t watch a single episode of Friends while writing this theory. I’ve never even seen most of the episodes. It took, from start to finish, about one hour to research this theory on Wikipedia and a few other sites, and another hour to crank out the original blog post, which has now been viewed by over 10,000 people. (My favorite recap of my theory is the one on Cinema Blend, because it’s the only one to consider my thoughts on True Detective and Ray Velcoro.)

Like this:

It’s Halloween season, which means all the usual trappings that come with this time of year: pumpkins, corn mazes, shockingly-early Christmas advertisements, and the annual “Treehouse of Horror” episode of The Simpsons.

But as I thought about the upcoming “Treehouse of Horror” episode, which I may or may not watch, I started to wonder: do the regular episodes of The Simpsons all take place in the same continuum? Are they actually one story about one family in one town in one universe? Is there such thing as a canonical Simpsons episode? Does The Simpsons make any sense at all?

And thus, a new fan theory: every single episode of The Simpsons takes place in a different universe.

My suggestion is that every time we see an episode of The Simpsons, we are getting a glimpse into a slightly different version of Springfield and this family. There is an infinite amount of universes in which The Simpsons exist. No two episodes show us precisely the same family or the same world. Sure, sometimes a character will remember something from a previous episode, but they are only remembering a similar instance to what we previously saw. Every Lisa, Bart, Homer, Marge, Maggie, and the rest of them are always slightly different, like the differing iterations of Spock and Kirk between the old Star Trek and the new one.

If every episode is a different universe, this theory explains all the continuity issues and changing details.

The Simpsons, like many cartoons, refuses to allow its characters to age while the world around them changes. This is not unique to this cartoon, but there are many issues that have arisen, both in addition to this and beyond this. A few of them:

Homer and Marge were once Baby Boomers; now they’re on the young end of Generation X.

Waylon Smithers used to be black.

Homer once was in a Grammy-winning band, which appears to have been mostly forgotten and irrelevant.

Seymour Skinner was revealed to be an impostor, with a stolen-identity Draper-esque plotline, before the entire town agreed to never speak of it again.

Apu’s children age while other characters (such as Maggie, who should be older than them) stay the same age.

Remember “The Principal and the Pauper,” in which Principal Skinner is revealed to be an impostor, and then no episode ever mentions it again? Was that the only universe in which this strange event happened?

It explains the evidence behind “the Tesseract theory.”

In addition to the issues above, there are some really bonkers ones, that some have argued can only be explained through the idea that Springfield exists outside time and space. Examples like:

George Bush lives next door to The Simpsons in a mansion that doesn’t exist in other episodes

West Springfield is three times the size of Texas.

There’s a mountain called the Murderhorn that doesn’t otherwise exist.

Paul McCartney lived above the town’s convenient store.

Hard to believe that this moment is meant to be remembered by the characters in every subsequent episode.

This theory would not only eliminate the need for such a “tesseract fan theory,” but also eliminates the need and evidence for the “Homer is in a coma” theory.

It explains why no one ever learns any lessons.

Episodes of The Simpsons regularly end with a character learning a lesson. Or multiple characters. Or the entire town. But when the next episode begins, these lessons aren’t remembered. The events that triggered them rarely even are.

This might be the greatest example of a lack of continuity. How many times has Homer tried to be a better father, a better husband, a better man? How many times has he quit drinking? Unlike Randy Marsh or Sterling Archer, an action that Homer does in one episode will have no effect on himself in a future episode. And what happened to all the role models that Lisa has had: does she remember Bleeding Gums Murphy?

And perhaps that is why this theory is needed: it makes us feel better about the lessons that the characters gain from their triumphs and pitfalls. Imagine that there are countless versions of Homer who has learned his lessons, countless successful Lisas. Perhaps a version of Barney Gumble who is still sober. Maybe even a version of Homer who didn’t have the crayon re-inserted into his brain.

And finally, this theory explains what happened to Troy McClure.

Is any character more missed?

Perhaps, if this theory is true, there are universes where Phil Hartman’s Troy McClure still exists.